In her brief prior to the hearing, Brandt-Hawley said "SOHO and other stakeholders" will press to eliminate parking in the Plaza de Panama "in a non-destructive and un-intrusive way."

On earlier occasions, SOHO's executive director, Bruce Coons, has said an alternate plan would be far less expensive and his organization would help find the money to make it happen. But so far he has not identified any major donors who have stepped up to lead such a fund-raising campaign.

Jacobs, who attended the hearing with other members of his committee, said previously that if an alternate plan were adopted, he would support it, but only if it achieved the goals he had laid out, which included both eliminating parking and traffic. It's possible he might change his mind if the judge rules against his plan.

Mayor Bob Filner, who opposed the Jacobs plan, said earlier in the week that he hopes SOHO and Jacobs will return to the mediation table and see if a new plan can be fashioned.

Irwin Jacobs, his wife Joan to his left, at the July 2012 hearing before the City Council, when his $45 million Plaza de Panama plan was approved.— Peggy Peattie

Irwin Jacobs, his wife Joan to his left, at the July 2012 hearing before the City Council, when his $45 million Plaza de Panama plan was approved.
— Peggy Peattie

Jacobs, backed by former Mayor Jerry Sanders, had unveiled his plan in August 2010 with the hope it would be completed in time for the 2015 start to a year-long centennial celebration of the Panama-California Exposition that made the park the city's crown jewel of art and recreation. The City Council approved the plan last summer.

Park supporters have hoped for years to rid the Central Mesa of cars and parking and return the space to pedestrian-only use. The park's master plan, completed in 1989 while Filner was on the City Council and represented the park, and a more specific precise plan called for eliminating parking from the Plaza de Panama but continued traffic over the Cabrillo Bridge and a parking garage behind the organ pavilion.

Other options have been proposed over the years, such as extending the San Diego Trolley to the park, building the garage at Inspiration Point across Park Boulevard from Palisades area of the park's southern entrance or handling parking at a massive underground garage at the San Diego Zoo's parking lot.

The only move to restrict parking took place in the 1970s, when the eastern Prado was closed to traffic and the Bea Evenson Fountain was built in the Plaza de Balboa at the avenue's eastern entrance. In the 1990s the late Mary Elizabeth North donated the tile fountain in the middle of the Plaza de Panama as an inducement to clear out 54 to 67 parking spaces there and turn the area into a pedestrian-only zone.

But park institutions resisted removing any parking spaces and through-traffic, fearing the public would not flock to their doors because of the entrance they would have to walk.

This touched-up aerial photo of Balboa Park shows the route of the proposed bypass bridge from the Cabrillo Bridge to the Alcazar Garden parking lot.— Plaza de Panama Committee

You have to be lucky to find an open parking space in Plaza de Panama.
/ Union-Tribune file photo

Jacobs' plan addressed those access problems by promising a tram service between his new garage and the Plaza de Panama and concentrating handicap parking spaces and valet service in the Alcazar Garden, located south of California Quadrangle where the Museum of Man is located.

But the price to be paid was his bypass bridge -- and that was what SOHO has fought against. The National Park Service, National Trust for Historic Preservation, the state Historic Preservation Office and the city's Historical Resources Board all warned against adding the bypass because of its visual impact on the California Quadrangle and its 190-foot California Tower.